Football World Cup Kick Off Times

When the World Cup is held in South America, European viewers can be concerned about the kick off times of individual games. Much as we all love our football, we’d rather not be watching after midnight but thankfully, the 2014 tournament has a number of schedules that should suit all viewers.

Split kick offs

Brazil opens the finals against Croatia on June 12th and local kick off time will be 17:00 hours. Brazil are four hours behind the UK so you can expect to start watching the game at 21:00 GMT (or 22:00 CET, Central European Time).

The remaining games in Group A start at 13:00, 16:00 and 19:00 local time and that equates to 17:00, 20:00 and 23:00 in the UK.

Those times apply to all group matches with one exception: The Ivory Coast versus Japan tie in Group C will kick off at 22:00 in Brazil – 02:00 in the UK (That is 03:00 CET). So with that one anomaly, the latest you will be viewing a game in the British Isles is 11.00pm at night.

England’s group

All eyes are on England in group D, the so called group of death but with Italy and Uruguay also included in this section, there will be plenty of interest from all across the globe. The first game in Group D is between Uruguay and Costa Rica and this kicks off at 16:00 local time – 20:00 in the UK (21:00 CET). This is then followed by England v Italy which is at 19:00 in Brazil – 23:00 GMT (24:00 CET).

England will be hoping for a positive result from that game before they tackle Uruguay in a fixture that kicks off at 16:00 local time – 20:00 UK (21:00 CET). From there, Roy Hodgson’s men will play their final tie against Costa Rica, kicking off at 13:00 in Brazil, 5.00 PM in England.

The holders: Spain

Among the other games to look out for is a repeat of the 2010 final between the Netherlands and Spain. This match opens Group B on 13th June and will kick off at 16:00 local time – 20:00 in the UK (21:00 CET). Spain will then play Chile on 18th June at exactly the same time before completing their opening rounds with a match against Australia on 23rd of June.

The hosts: Brazil

As we’ve seen, Brazil open the tournament at 17:00 local time with their match against Croatia but what happens to Luis Felipe Scolari’s men after that?

Next up is a match against Mexico which could decide the group and this begins on 17th June at 16:00 in Brazil, 20:00 in the UK (21:00 CET). The Brazilians will hope to have qualified by the time they play their final group tie against Cameroon on the 23rd June. This match kicks off at 17:00 local time – 21:00 in the UK (22:00 CET).

Round of 16

Once the group games are out of the way, the 2014 tournament moves into the round of 16 and once again, the kick off times are nicely distributed for viewers in Europe. The eight games are evenly split between 13:00 local start times (17:00) GMT and 17:00 local (21:00) GMT.

Quarter Finals

The quarter finals are also split evenly between those two kick off times so you will be able to see two games kicking off at 17:00 GMT (18:00 CET) and two at 21:00 GMT (22:00 CET).

Semi Finals

From there, the semi finals will both start at 17:00 in Brazil, 21:00 in the UK. The third placed play off will also kick off at that time and that brings us all the way to the final on 13th of July.